


Black Dog

by Natasi (SwordDraconis113)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Depression, Extended Metaphors, Gen, POV First Person, Wordcount: 500-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 21:46:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6301576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SwordDraconis113/pseuds/Natasi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It began when a dog broke through my front door.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black Dog

**Author's Note:**

> For class we have to submit 500 words each week, this is what I'm submitting this week. It's a little bit experimental in my own style.

I need to tell you something. But first, I have to tell you what happened to me a year ago.

It began when a dog broke through my front door. I woke up to find it in my cupboards halfway through a bag of chips. The refrigerator door was left ajar, with nothing but mustard and half a bottle of wine left on my shelves.

The wine didn’t remain there long.

I let it stay the night. I would feed it, allow it to sleep and in the morning, I would drag it by the scruff of its neck and leave it to die outside.

But the dog never left.

It slept, at first, by the side of my bed, its snores keeping me awake as I stared at the ceiling fan swinging around and around in circles, until I would finally fall into a restless sleep. Then, as it grew fat on a diet of wine and ice-cream, it stayed on the bed, its head heavy on my chest, baring teeth when I tried to leave its side.

Only to go to the bathroom, or bring it back food, did it allow me out of that bed. I took solace in those two tasks, believing that they were an accomplishment.

For the next two weeks, I would text my friends that I was ‘not feeling well’, before ringing up work to call in sick. I couldn’t allow them to know about this dog. The absurdity of this dog’s weight immobilising me was too humiliating to admit out loud.

So I lied, and then my sick days ran out. I had to return to work.

The dog must have understood this because the next day it let me out of the bed. I managed to shower without it so much as a growling, before I made it to the door. There, it stopped me.

I kicked it with such a force that surprised me, and ran for my car, hoping to leave this dog behind, to leave it at my front step to go off and starve until it found someone, _anyone_ , else to feed it.

But it leapt inside my car with a speed I did not have, and climbed into my backseat, staring at me through the rearview mirror as I drove to work.

I can not explain the numb defeat I felt. It left a deep rot in my chest that ate me inside-out.

But its quiet torture didn’t end there. Without complaint, I allowed this dog, every day, to follow me to work. It sat at my desk, its head in my lap, baring teeth at all those who passed by, until they stopped coming to my desk all-together. Every day, it followed me home, its eyes staring at me from the backseat of my car, leaving an anxiety present in the back of my head, a need to get home without diversion, where it would give me privacy behind the shower door.

I didn’t completely give in to it all together, I had tried to take it for walks, but it’d sit on the couch, refusing to budge an inch no matter how hard I pushed it. I tried to talk to friends, begging for help, but the times I could reach my friends, the response was the same, “It’s just a dog, if you don’t want it, get rid of it.”

And I did. 

However, I don’t remember how I got rid of this dog in the end. One day I started to notice it wasn’t there. But lately I’ve been hearing it scratch at the front door. I don’t want to let it in, but I think it’s going to break through the door again, and this time, it might kill me.


End file.
